What's your time worth?

The only machine I need to complete my new shop is a jointer. Grizzly is out of it at the local store until the end of June and I’ve been looking for a used one in the meantime. I’ve come to the conclusion today that I have wasted so much time searching for deals on used tools on CL and auction site the past couples months, if I spent that time working instead of searching out a deal, I could have paid for a new one by now.

5 replies so far

Before I retired, my time was worth a little more than $52 per hour, on my personal level. The company charged a pile more than that, as they charged for the next higher pay grade for my work while paying me the lower rate. It’s why I retired early. I was making more on my investments than I was getting paid in wages, anyway. Now, it takes three people to do what I had been doing, so the last laugh is on them.

And yes, you are correct, you need to make the decision based on what your time is worth, which may mean buying a machine for, say, $500 more than you want to spend. But if you get a job sooner because of that purchase, you will have made money that otherwise would have passed you by. It’s a gamble, either way.

Clammy, your post makes no sense. How much time do you spend on Craigslist and auction sites? Do you do woodworking for a living? What kind of woodworking? What were you doing before spending hours and hours equipping a shop? Unless you lay the numbers out for me I don’t think your time spent searching can be of any significant value. Most of your searching could have been done after normal work hours. Do the numbers for me or I suspect this post is nothing more than a conversation starter…

Yes, it was meant as a conversation starter, this is the “Coffee Lounge,” right?

Before I made my post, I spent well over an hour on CL & some auction sites that morning, when I should have been working on other projects. Then it came to me, “I really waste a of time each day checking out CL.” Sure, sometimes it’s when I’m dropping the kids off at the pool, but sometimes it’s a diversion to get out of doing real work. Regardless of whether it was during or after work hours, it’s still time I wasted that I could have used on other projects or even educating myself for future projects.

In the past three months I’ve managed to get two air filters and a tool chest on CL. I probably spent 30 minutes a day searching for deals, that’s a good 45 hours spent to save a little over $400.